Manil Suri - The City of Devi

Perhaps what attracted me to all these extracurricular activities was the way Karun’s preoccupations seemed to dissolve in my company. I loved watching his seriousness lift and a more carefree personality emerge, like a face behind purdah only a spouse could unveil. My favorite game was to see how often I could provoke his smile. Each time I scored, a jolt of realization ran through me—this was something only I could accomplish, a privilege extended only to me. He liked to tell me about his parents, to compare childhood notes about fending for ourselves. I made sure we fucked whenever the conversations got too emotional or too long—we weren’t lesbians, after all.

His smartness pleased me, even though I found his atoms and galaxies only mildly interesting. (Perhaps his own family’s erudition biases the Jazter more deeply than he cares to admit.) One morning, Karun called to excitedly announce a link between our two fields—he’d come across an article on pricing financial derivatives using quantum techniques.

I took him home for dinner with my parents—something unthinkable with any of my former liaisons. “It’s so nice to meet Ijaz’s friends,” my mother declared, and joined us for Scrabble on the dining table afterwards. My father beamed benignly and commended me for taking such an interest in physics. (A physicist , I wanted to correct—I was taking such an interest in a physicist. )

The only person not so oblivious was Nazir. “I could make some tea,” he offered, “if sahib will be retiring to his room later with his friend.” But I felt too self-conscious taking Karun to my room, so we contented ourselves with some footsie under the table instead.

Nazir put his perceptiveness to good use. The next time my parents left on a trip, he demurred when I offered him some time off as well. “It’s so expensive to go to my village. If only I had the two hundred rupees for train fare.” It took some bargaining before he settled for a hundred, with an extra twenty to cook the biryani.

THE THREATENED BOMB has done what a thousand traffic engineers couldn’t—made walking through even the most congested areas in the suburbs a breeze. Although baskets and crates and handcarts lie discarded everywhere, the cars that normally choke the streets are gone—driven far off by owners in search of safety. The menacing specter of the Limbus has scared away the pedestrians. Even the ragpickers have vanished, with the result that an unclaimed bonanza of paper swirls luxuriantly at our feet.

An imposing figure stands guard in the center of the traffic island up ahead. Sarita and I both freeze at the same instant, as though motionlessness will magically confer camouflage, even though we are in the middle of the street. Then I note the apparition’s abnormal height—it rises even taller than the traffic lights. “Nothing human can be that size,” I whisper, and we cautiously resume our advance.

Sarita recognizes it first. “It’s one of those Mumbadevi statues. The warriors the HRM installed during their ‘City of Devi’ days.”

Except someone has chopped off all six arms. The neck has been hacked through and the head turned upside down. Dirt fills the eye sockets; lips, nose, ears have been chiseled away. Hatchet marks and paint splotches cover the whole body in an angry patchwork. With her vandalized torso and rearranged parts, Mumbadevi looks like a sculpture composed by one of the more misogynist cubists—Picasso, perhaps. And yet she still stands, too heavy to topple over from her pedestal, gazing with her desecrated eyes at the destruction of her city, managing a mute dignity in the dying sun. “We’re definitely getting closer to the Limbus,” I say.

Behind Mumbadevi stretches a boulevard lined with shuttered storefronts. Every third or fourth shop is charred—in one, I think I spot the remains of an arm sticking out of the debris. Mahim has not been spared by the bombing, Sarita remarks, but I tell her it looks like Limbu handiwork. “They probably targeted the Hindus to drive them out of business when the war first started.” I position myself between her and the shops so she doesn’t glimpse any hiding body parts.

My partner in extreme tourism has become much more inquisitive, I’ve noticed—asking me several questions about my background and job. I answer truthfully as far as possible, confident she won’t figure me out. When it comes to explaining why my mother’s in Jogeshwari, though, I get carried away—spinning a heartrending tale about early widowhood and property-snatching relatives. “Why aren’t you married?” she throws in, as if trying to trip me up after getting my defenses down. I give my standard reply of not having found the right person yet. But I’m hoping you will lead me to him .

Sarita is quite forthcoming when I ask her questions in return, except when I try to learn what her husband might be doing at a Bandra guesthouse. Then she responds in monosyllables, and I wonder if she’s stonewalling. It occurs to me that she simply might not know, that Karun may not have confided in her. Might this bode well for the Jazter’s chances?

The silence of the boulevard makes the cacophony of billboards covering the building façades even louder than usual—there are exhortations on the behalf of Suzuki cars, television serials, skin-lightening creams. “New Singapore Masala Chicken Pizza!” a sign screams outside an abandoned Pizza Hut, reminding me I haven’t eaten since breakfast. The door is missing, and though I’m wary of grisly discoveries lurking in the interior, we enter. Inside, the place has been meticulously looted—even the countertops in the kitchen have been ripped out. Only the wall posters remain—a fading explanation of the ill-fated “City of Devi” computer mouse promotion flanked by announcements for more new flavors: “Cauliflower Manchurian,” “Texas Tandoori,” even the improbable “Swedish Ginger-Garlic.”

I’m getting increasingly faint imagining all these pizzas, when we hear the bells. I pull Sarita deeper inside, but then see through the window that the sounds come from children on bicycles. They circle outside the door, perhaps a dozen boys in scruffy shorts and undershirts, some so young their feet barely touch the pedals. “You won’t find anything in there,” one of them shouts. “To eat, you have to go to the mosque—at eight p.m., they feed anyone who shows up.”

I wave them away as we emerge, but they follow us down the street, ringing their bells and crisscrossing our path. “What a lovely wife you have,” they hoot. “So sexy in that red sari without her burkha—too bad the Limbus will beat her up to teach her a lesson.”

The oldest in the group, a boy of about twelve with long scabs on his cheeks, stops his bicycle right in front of us. “Come this way.” He gestures towards a narrow alleyway trailing off. “The guards on the main road have rifles. They’ll only let you through if you pay a lot.”

Although I’m confident I can prove I’m Muslim (if reciting all the Koran verses I know by heart doesn’t do it, there’s always the anatomical identity card), I lose my nerve. Sarita would present a problem even if less flamboyantly dressed, plus what if they find my gun? I take her hand and follow the boy down the alley, wondering if he’s leading us into a trap. The feeling intensifies as he ushers us through a large wooden doorway into an empty compound, then chains his bicycle to a post and disappears up some steps. I’m looking for rifles to start blazing at us from the windows circling the compound when the boy returns. “Here,” he says, handing Sarita a length of brown fabric. “Put this on.”

“What is it?” she asks, holding up the sturdy cotton material. “It looks like a tablecloth.”